Un cri dans la nuit (A cry in the night)

A dead soldier lying on the ground with right arm outstretched, still holding his bayonet in France during the First World War. Another French soldier kneels beside him looking towards a light in the sky and making a plea for help. In the margin lower left the artist has drawn a miniature portrait of the seated soldier's face. Louis Abel-Truchet was born at Versailles, France, in 1857, and died in action on the Western Front on 9 September 1918. He was a well known French painter, etcher and lithographer who studied in Paris with two highly renowned teachers, Jules Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. He began exhibiting at the Paris Salons about 1891.